By Hon. Charles Bakkabulindi.
The report further reveals that people in informal employment are estimated at 93%. The unemployment rate is 9.4% implying that as at 2014, 1.6 million of the working age population was unemployed. The percentages of people in employment are given as follows;
• 64% of working population is engaged in subsistence agriculture .
• Professionals account for 1%.
• Technicians and associate professional workers constitute 2% of the working population.
• In urban areas 14% are domestic workers the majority being females.
• Motorcycle (bodaboda riders) is now a growing occupation and accounts for 1.5% of the working population.
• The rest of the workers in both informal and formal employment are estimated as 17.5% of the total working employment.
Organized Labour
When we go by these statistics, the figure given as active working population is 18.1 million people and if you compare it with organized labour in Uganda, the gap is extremely big. When you combine all workers in the 42 registered labour unions, total membership is slightly over 3 million with teachers and plantation unions having the biggest potion over organized labour.
The problem
The factors that have led to this low level of organization are listed here under;
i. Lack of unity among the top labour leaders
– Employers are taking advantage of this disunity between Labour Leaders to deny them union recognition.
ii. The unfavourable Government policies have also contributed greatly to these low figures.
These include;
– Privatization which led to massive retrenchments.
– The delay of instituting a statutory minimum wage.
– Giving big latitude to the so called investors who in turn suffocate union activities such as unionization and negotiations.
iii. Poor marketing strategies of the trade union activities by the Labour Union Leaders. In fact some workers have never heard of what a union is.
iv. Anti-union employers e.g. most Chinese and Indians investors don’t want to recognize the unions and really make it difficult for their workers to be recruited in the union.
v. The weak enforcement department of the Ministry of Gender , labour and social Development is an advantage to the stubborn employers.
vi. Similarly the industrial court which is meant to settle disputes between workers and employers is greatly incapacitated by inadequate funding and other logistics.
What then should be done?
1. Now that most of the trade unions leaders have resorted to form a one strong National center by joining NOTU, there is hope
“Teachers and Plantation Unions have the highest number of organized labour.”
That most of the obstacles specially those due to disunity confusion and power struggle will come to an end.
2. The NOTU department of organizing and recruitment must be strengthened.
3. All the National organizing secretaries of National Unions must double their efforts of work.
4. NOTU and the worker’s MPs should come up with a recruitment campaign aimed at reaching all the unionisable workers.
5. NOTU should formulate / establish a national organizing team to be composed of all the National Organizing Secretaries of the NOTU affiliates.
6. NOTU should come out with a strategic organizing / recruitment plan which will include among others;
– Equipping Union organizers with organizing skills.
– Publicize trade union activities through media both paper and electronic.
– Organize retreats / seminars of the General Secretaries of unions affiliated to NOTU specifically to discuss organizing strategies.
– Carry out Evaluation and audit programmes of the workers organized and recruited. Once this is done, surely the gap between the organized and the non organized will tremendously be minimized■
